Business mogul Sean Carter, better known as Jay-Z, has struck up a partnership deal with the NFL and his own company ROC NATION. The deal calls for Jay-Z to bring top entertainment talent for NFL performances and curate the Super Bowl halftime show.
When the deal was announced last month, social media rose in an uproar as people took to Twitter to give their unfiltered opinions about the relationship. Some called the rapper a hypocrite because of the words and lyrics he recited about the league just a few months before. Carter rapped, “I said no to the Superbowl, you need me I don’t need you.”
Many are skeptical as to just what Carter plans to do as a partner with the NFL.
Much of the dialogue and anger stemmed from the fact that Colin Kaepernick has been blackballed and is still unemployed in the NFL. Meanwhile, Jay-z is one of the most powerful and influential leaders in hip-hop, and it seemed to others that he was working with the “suppressor.”
I think we should judge a person by their past and the type of things that they stood for and acted on as opposed to pre-judging them. And in this case Jay-Z has only a record of freeing people from prison, fighting social injustice while also producing documentaries about racism in America and police brutality – exactly what Kaepernick kneeled for during the playing of the national anthem to start this movement.
These efforts go hand in hand, and I wouldn’t want anyone else leading the way other than these two types of people. Bringing attention and having someone in the NFL with a position of power can bring more of fairness to the things that take place when it comes to football and society.
Without Kaepernick kneeling and opening the conversation on police brutality, we might not be having this important discussion. It took that platform that the NFL must bring the audience’s attention to just what really takes place and what has been occurring for decades.
While Jay-Z’s partnership with the NFL is a controversial and highly criticized deal, the NFL and ROC NATION will be under heavy fire with every action taken. We leave it too time to tell us how this will go. It can be a very upside deal and change things as we perceive it today or it can be a disaster and totally divide the nation even more than it already is.